Been thinking about all the things I need to do on the site and, of course, as I’m thinking of that, other possibilities keep coming to mind. The visual redesign of the site is going much faster now and hopefully that will be ready before the end of August. Once that is done, the addition of content will go much more quickly as my mind won’t be so preoccupied. Here’s the latest look to the redesign (just slightly different from before):

I’ve been thinking especially about the pending Magnolia Vale section (no, I haven’t forgotten about you, Bonnie ). It’s going to be a fan section and is intended, if you’ll recall, to contain fan fiction, artwork, silliness, and other things like that. I’ve been thinking about how to best set it up and have been considering the possibility of setting it up in a blog format with a number of people having rights to post there. Not sure if there’s an interest there or not. And I’m being hampered right now by the fact that I injured my right hand in a freak dumpster accident (don’t ask) along with the fact that I’m taking some courses and am just trying to get through my work day without killing someone.

Anyway, I might start a poll to see if anyone has any interest in that type of thing (a communal blog type thing).

I suppose it’s a sign that somehow or another this little really insignificant blog is turning up somewhere in the search engines but I could really do without the drive-by blog spammers. Blog spammers are people who hunt down blogs where they can post their crappy links to their crappy, half-assed sites (usually gambling ones in this case). Right up there with people who spam guestbooks and referrer logs.

They’re all idiots, I tell ya. Complete idiots, the lot of them. So much so, in fact, that a couple of them decided to bombard this blog with 120+ spammy entries today. Wasn’t that nice of them? [bastards!]

Just learned that Yahoo is improving their Mail Plus! service to something that actually makes me think kind thoughts about Yahoo for a change. I wonder if it is in response to the competition waiting in the wings from Google’s Gmail which offers (or rather will offer, when it is publicly released — it’s in beta testing right now) 1GB of email space. In any case, it all now makes Hotmail seem really crappy in comparison.

The way it used to work was that a regular Yahoo account used to get you 4MB of space for free. You could upgrade to a 10MB mail box for $9.95 a year or 25MB for $19.99 a year. And could add some additional extras for an additional minimal fee (e.g. I was paying $29.95 for the 25MB mail box with the ability to use multiple email addresses within the same Yahoo account and increased filtering capabilities). All of that was known as Mail Plus!.

Now, Mail Plus! only costs $19.95 a year and comes with a 2GB mail box and no graphical ads (that’s what makes me actually almost like Yahoo now). Don’t know if that means no ads at all ever but right now it there are none. Even if all they did was get rid of the graphical ones (especially the Java and Flash ones), I’d be a happy camper.

Gotta love unexpected improvements. My hosting company recently improved my hosting plan to an obscene amount of space and bandwidth and actually reduced the monthly fee in the process. I like this trend towards offering more for less.

Dropped off Mots at the vet’s this morning to get his teeth cleaned. Nothing major but they have to put him under in order to do it. He hasn’t had to have general anaesthesia since he got neutered when he was a baby and he’s a lot older than that now — I’m worried about him there. He gets very stressed out by the vet clinic and his anxiety has been escalating with every visit (which is why I avoid taking him as much as I can). This time I even had to wrestle him into the carrier, which I never have to do. It breaks my heart every time.

The first time I took him to the vet, I was able to hold onto him for a few minutes before he freaked out and turned into a feral bobcat, all teeth and razor-sharp claws. He slipped out of the exam cubicle and into the cat-themed gift shop next door before anyone could catch him. It took five of us (one vet, three vet assistants, and me) to corner him and get him into the carrier. The next time, they actually had to spend more time patching me up than examining him because he got me good with his claws (I was taking blood thinners at the time so I bled a lot). Now, we don’t even dare open the carrier door — they have dump him into a bag and then mask him to knock him out a bit just to give him a checkup. He’s scary when he wakes up after that, let me tell you. Growling, hissing, spitting, and lunging at the front of the carrier. Scares all the other cat owners in the waiting room. LOL But then he’s a pathetic little creature when he realizes he’s really going home — the change from wild creature in the clinic to sorrowful baby as soon as we get in the cab is startling.

Have to leave him there today until after 4pm and I’m finding myself decidedly uncomfortable in my own home. We’ve been together since a couple of weeks after I moved into this apartment — this is the first time since he arrived here that I’ve been in this apartment without him here and I feel very, very alone. Weird, eh? Can’t imagine how bad I’d be when (no, IF because he’s going to live forever, dammit!) he’s no longer here.

Hopefully he won’t hold this vet visit against me for too long.

Thought you might like to see a sample of what the new site design is going to look like…

[click the image to see a larger -- full-ish sized -- version of it]

Some details of it might change before I unveil the whole site but that’s pretty much what it’s going to look like. It’s less, um, colourful than before (the whole site is pretty much the new, natural tones instead of the old separate colour scheme for each section) but the pages fill the screen and there will be added information in many sections, to make use of that new space.